■ AUSTRALIA
Asbestos activist dies at 61
Bernie Banton, the Australian asbestos victim who led an international fight for compensation from building materials giant James Hardie Industries NV, died yesterday after a long battle with lung disease, his family said. He was 61. Banton contracted asbestosis after working for a James Hardie subsidiary from 1968 to 1974. Workers at the factory were known as "snowmen" because they were regularly coated with the white asbestos powder that the company made into fire-repellant wallboard and other products. He later became the public face of a lengthy political and legal battle that eventually persuaded the company to set up a compensation fund for victims of its products.
■ AUSTRALIA
Former soldier to go to trial
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A former soldier was yesterday committed to stand trial over the theft of army rocket launchers which ended up in the hands of a potential terrorist, court officials said. Dean Steven Taylor, 39, was committed for trial in the Sydney District Court for his role in the distribution of 10 rocket launchers which were stolen from the Australian Defence Force in 2002. Taylor, a former infantry corporal, allegedly received two rocket launchers, two rockets and five hand grenades from his former brother-in-law, army captain Shane Della-Vedova, who is accused of stealing the weapons while working as an armaments destruction specialist. Both men allegedly conspired to sell the weapons on to criminals for up to A$12,000 (US$10,500) each.
■ AUSTRALIA
Dinosaur bones discovered
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A hoard of dinosaur bones has been discovered at the site of a planned desalination plant meant to deliver Australia's second biggest city from drought, forcing a re-think of the A$3 billion (US$2.7 billion) project. The fossilized bones, estimated to be 115 million years old and belonging to dinosaurs and ancient marine reptiles, were found on a windswept beach in front of the planned project at Powlett River, southeast of Melbourne. "It's like boring through the tombs of Egypt's ancient emperors or drilling through the terra-cotta warriors in China after they were discovered," opposition lawmaker Ken Smith said, demanding a study before the project proceeds.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Yeosu to host Expo 2012
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The city of Yeosu beat out contenders in Morocco and Poland to be chosen as the site for the 2012 World's Fair, which typically draws millions of visitors from around the globe, organizers said. The theme for the 2012 exposition is to be an environmental one: "The Living Ocean and Coast." Next year's World's Fair, also known as Expo 2008, will be held in Zaragoza, Spain, and in 2010 it will be in Shanghai.
■ HONG KONG
Calligraphy fails to sell
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A rare copy of work by Wang Xizhi (王羲之), one of the most celebrated Chinese calligraphers, remained unsold after failing to win enough interest at Christie's Hong Kong auction on Monday. Mei Zhi Tie (妹至帖) a tracing copy of Wang's calligraphy from the Tang Dynasty, was billed as the highlight of the Fine Chinese Classical Paintings and Calligraphy sale at Christie's autumn auction. No actual works by the master survive, making this copy "an extremely rare find," the auction house said previously. Christie's had estimated the work would be sold for as much as HK$40 million (US$5 million) but the highest offer was HK$21 million. "The seller didn't want to sell at the price [offered]," a Christie's spokeswoman said.
■ AUSTRIA
Kosovo talks deadlocked
Internationally sponsored talks between Serbian and Kosovo Albanian leaders went into a second day in Baden yesterday with no accord over the future of the province in sight, despite a looming deadline. With Pristina refusing to give up demands for Kosovo's independence and Belgrade offering only a wide autonomy for the Serbian province, negotiators saw little hope of reaching a settlement by Dec. 10. The talks were to wrap up on today after a series of meetings between the Serbs, the Kosovo delegation and the troika of the EU, the US and Russia.
■ SUDAN
Briton could face lashes
Authorities yesterday began questioning a British teacher arrested for insulting Islam after her students named a teddy bear Mohammed. Gillian Gibbons, a 54-year-old teacher at the Unity High School in Khartoum, was arrested on Sunday after complaints from parents. If convicted of insulting Islam, she could be sentenced to 40 lashes, six months in prison or a fine, lawyers said. Teachers at the school said Gibbons had asked her class of seven-year-olds to choose their favorite name for the teddy bear and 20 of the 23 had voted for Mohammad. Unity director Robert Boulos had said the school would be closed until January because he was afraid of reprisals in Khartoum.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
MI6 hosts radio show
MI6 has opened its doors to a popular radio program, part of its bid to recruit the minorities and female officers it says it needs to spy on the country's enemies. MI6 allowed BBC Radio One -- a station aimed mainly at young people -- to conduct the first ever interviews inside its London headquarters. The interviews were tightly controlled -- the MI6 chief of recruitment was referred to by a fake name and the reporter's movements were strictly controlled. The recruiter spoke about Britain's need for a more diverse bunch of spies. "There are some places that white males can't go," he said.
■ FINLAND
Santa was naughty: court
A court has ordered Santa Park in the north of the country to pay compensation to three of the underground amusement park's former elves for replacing them with temporary workers. The park -- which is located in the town of Rovaniemi on the Arctic Circle and boasts that it employs the world's only "official" Santa Claus -- has been ordered to pay the employees 5,600 euros (US$8,300) each in damages. Park director Wille Rajala said the layoffs were necessary for the struggling business, which fired all its full-time elves the following year. The court said there were no grounds for the temporary lay-offs.
■ ITALY
Truffle sets 50-year record
A mongrel dog named Rocco helped make history in a Tuscan wood when he led his owners to a 1.5kg white truffle, the largest unearthed in half a century and now expected to break auction records. "I had to tie Rocco up, he was so excited," said truffle hunter Cristiano Savini, who spent more than an hour on his hands and his knees with his father, Luciano, carefully digging down 80cm to find the truffle last Friday. The truffle is second in size to a 2.5kg truffle found in 1954 and presented to US president Dwight Eisenhower. The knobbly, soil encrusted truffle will go under the hammer on Saturday during a charity auction in Macau.
■ SAUDI ARABIA
Prince criticizes rape ruling
A senior Saudi official on Monday sought to distance his government from a court's decision to sentence a woman who was gang-raped to 200 lashes. "Unfortunately, these things happen. Bad judgments occur in legal systems," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told reporters while in Washington to attend a Middle East peace conference in Maryland. The 19-year-old Shiite woman was abducted and raped along with a male companion by seven men. Faisal said the judgment was being used to vilify the Saudi government even though it was not responsible because the courts are independent. "Issues like that, bad judgments by the courts, happen everywhere, even in the United States," he said. "It is a process that is still going on. This is being reviewed by a legal process and we hope it will be changed."
■ ECUADOR
Seven die in mine blast
Seven miners were killed, 40 were injured and 30 were missing after a dynamite blast at a gold mine in Azuay Province in southern Ecuador, firefighters said on Monday. A short circuit may have triggered the explosion in the private Liga de Oro mine's dynamite depository, but authorities were still trying to confirm what caused the accident, firefighter chief Rodrigo Durazno said. About 400 people, mostly Peruvian immigrants, work in the mine, Durazno said.
■ UNITED STATES
Farmer cuts off trapped arm
A South Carolina farmer was forced to cut off his arm with a pocket knife after a farm machine in which his hand was trapped burst into flames. "If I was going to die here I was going to put up a fight, and that's basically what I did," Sampson Parker told a local reporter. Parker had noticed a corn stalk stuck in a picker, but when he attempted to remove it, the machine caught his glove, pulling his hand into a mechanical roller. He used a metal rod to stop the machine and called for help. With no help forthcoming, he decided to cut off his fingers. But when the machine caught fire, the trapped farmer had to cut off his arm to escape.
■ UNITED STATES
Death not linked to 9/11
New York City's chief medical examiner has decided not to reclassify the death of a police officer who worked at Ground Zero as a homicide linked to the attack on the twin towers because the officer did not arrive at the site until Sept. 13, 2001. When the officer, James Godbee Jr, died in December 2004 at age 44, the medical examiner's office listed the cause of death as sarcoidosis, a disease that scars the lungs and other organs. Although the death certificate did not link Godbee's disease to the days he spent at Ground Zero, the police pension fund did make that link later, granting the officer's widow a line-of-duty pension.
■ UNITED STATES
Hackers steal charities' data
Hackers obtained access last month to the e-mail addresses and passwords of thousands of donors to 92 charities that use online database software and services from Convio Inc. Among the charities are CARE and the American Museum of Natural History. There is no evidence that anyone has used the information to engage in fraud, but several charities have notified donors of the breach and advised them to consider changing passwords if they use the same password for other purposes. Convio, of Austin, Texas, which works primarily with charities, discovered the breach on Nov. 1 and told clients about it two days later, said Tad Druart, a spokesman, adding that the "investigation is continuing."
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese